After all the better-than-expected news about the U.S. economy reported in recent months, word that the massive backlog of delinquent home loans is about to begin pushing its way through the system again in the months ahead should temper some of the enthusiasm about the U.S. economy in the year ahead. Diana Olick has all the details about the latest foreclosure report from RealtyTrac in this story at CNBC today.

Despite a seasonal slowdown in overall foreclosure activity, and a process still bogged down and backed up by the “robo-signing” processing scandal, the U.S real estate market is about to be hit by another surge of bank repossessions, according to a new report from the online foreclosure sale site RealtyTrac. As banks resubmit millions of documents and courts begin hearing cases again, the backlog of over four million delinquent loans will start surging through the pipeline again.

“November’s numbers suggest a new set of incoming foreclosure waves, many of which may roll into the market as REOs [bank repossessions] or short sales sometime early next year,” said James Saccacio, co-founder of RealtyTrac. “Overall foreclosure activity is down 14 percent from a year ago, the smallest annual decrease over the past 12 months, and some bellwether states such as California, Arizona and Massachusetts actually posted year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity in November.”
…Other states, like New York and New Jersey, are still seeing huge delays in the foreclosure process–986 and 984 days respectively, says RealtyTrac, but they too are starting to ramp up, as various moratoria have been lifted and judges have made rulings that will kick-start the process.

I remember when we’d shake our heads in disbelief when the average time to foreclose on a property reached a year. Amazingly, it’s nearly three years now in some places…

Former CNBC personality Jeff Macke offers up Gold Prices Plunge! The Trend Is Not Your Friend (be careful, this has one of those annoying auto-play videos) in which he talks about having traded the metal for a whopping three years now and that recent price action constitutes “Humpty Dumpty levels of shattering”.

Well, before you think about doing anything rash, perhaps it worth looking back more than three years and, if you do, you’ll find that, so far, this is a run-of-the-mill correction as shown below, not an end-of-a-bull-market type of event that many financial writers would desperately like to believe.

[To see the graphic that goes along with this story, continue reading at Seeking Alpha.]

The Labor Department reported that consumer prices in the U.S. were unchanged last month as falling energy prices offset gains elsewhere and, on a year-over-year basis, inflation now registers 3.4 percent, its lowest level in five months.

Energy prices fell for the second month in a row, down 1.6 percent in November after a decline of 2.0 percent the month before, as gasoline prices followed up a 3.1 percent drop in October with a decline of 2.4 percent last month. From a year ago, gasoline prices are still quite high, up a whopping 19.7 percent.